What causes flickering or misaligned decals?

Decals placed coplanar with a surface z-fight, project through thin geometry onto unintended surfaces, or use the wrong projection box, so they flicker or appear in the wrong place.

How do I catch this when it only happens for some players?

Capture it automatically from the player's device with the full stack trace, the device and OS, the build, and a breadcrumb trail of what they did. That turns a vague complaint into a specific, reproducible issue you can fix without owning the hardware it happens on.

How to Fix Flickering or Misaligned Decals in a Game

Quick answer: Use the engine's decal system with a small depth bias, size the projection box to hit only the intended surface, and limit projection depth so decals do not bleed through walls.

Decal problems are projection and depth issues. Using the decal system with correct bias and bounds fixes them. Here is how.

How to fix it

1. Use a depth bias

A decal exactly on a surface z-fights with it, flickering. The decal system applies a small bias so the decal renders reliably on top. Use it rather than manually offsetting geometry.

2. Size the projection box

Decals project within a box or along a direction. If the box is too deep, the decal hits surfaces behind the intended one. Size it to wrap only the target surface.

3. Limit projection depth and angle

Constrain how far and at what angle a decal projects so it does not bleed through thin walls onto the other side or smear across steep surfaces. Tune the fade angle and depth.

Catching the ones you can't reproduce

The hardest version of this to fix is the one you can't reproduce — it only happens on a player's hardware, OS, driver, or save state, under conditions that simply aren't present on your machine. A report that says “it crashed” or “it froze” gives you nothing to act on, so the bug survives release after release while quietly costing you players.

Automatic error capture closes that gap. Each failure arrives with its full stack trace, the device and OS, the build number, and a breadcrumb trail of what the player did right before it broke, so even a failure you have never seen becomes a specific, reproducible issue. Fold identical failures into one signature ranked by how many players each hits, and your worklist sorts itself worst-first instead of arriving as a stream of vague complaints.

This is where a tool like Bugnet earns its place. Its SDK captures every error automatically with the full stack trace plus device, OS, memory, build, and game-state context, folds duplicates into one grouped issue with an occurrence count, and ties each to the build it first appeared on — so you fix the problem that hurts the most players first and confirm it is gone when its signature disappears from the next release.

The bug you can't reproduce isn't gone — it's just invisible until you capture it from the player's device.